Savage Courtship

‘I haven’t seen anyone except Mrs Riley this morning,’ Vanessa said, carefully avoiding any outright lie that could have unpleasant repercussions later. ‘Perhaps it was one of the resident ghosts, sir,’ she joked weakly.

‘I didn’t know we had any. Not that I believe in them, anyway.’

His scepticism was only what she expected from such a logical mind. You only had to look at the buildings he designed to see that his imagination was chained to the starkly realistic. ‘Oh, yes, people say that there are several—’

‘Female?’

She was disconcerted by his persistence over what had been a purely frivolous mention. ‘A couple of them, yes—’

‘Yellow-haired? Scantily dressed? A seductive siren luring a man towards the gates of hell and damnation?’

Oh, God, now she was certain that whatever they had got up to had been deeply sinful.

‘Er, I understand one of them was a guest murdered by one of the ostlers here at the inn—a...a dancing girl who was on her way to entertain at the goldfields at Coromandel...’

‘You mean a whore?’ He cut her gentle euphemisms to ribbons with cool contempt. ‘Well, that certainly fits.’

‘There’s no proof that she was a whore!’ Vanessa said hotly, not sure whether it was herself or the ghost she was supposed to be defending.

‘What about last night?’

‘W-what about last night?’ Vanessa quavered. Surely she hadn’t given him the idea she had expected money for whatever it was she had allowed him to do!

He looked at her impatiently, mistaking her horror for fear. ‘Forget about bloody ghosts. They don’t exist. So-called supernatural apparitions usually turn out to be the self-generated fantasies of people who are either gullible, publicity-seeking or deranged. You said you didn’t see anyone around this morning. What about last night? You were here then, weren’t you? Did you see or hear anything then?’

Oh, God... Her collar tightened again, squeezing her voice into a reedy squeak. ‘I was out. I went to dinner over in Waihi...’ No need to mention she’d been back, and tucked up cosily in his bed, by ten-thirty p.m.

‘Who with?’

In the three years she had worked for him he had never asked her a single personal question and Vanessa floundered, feeling that she was giving away a vital piece of herself with the information. ‘R-Richard—Richard Wells.’

‘The horse-breeder—from the property along the road?’ He frowned. He was obviously trying to remember his fleeting acquaintance with his nearest neighbour; he was probably also wondering what Richard saw in his sexless employee, Vanessa thought sourly, only to be proved wrong as he said sharply, ‘Not with Dane?’

Vanessa gasped. ‘Mr Judson? Of course not. As far as I know he’s at home in Auckland.’

‘Wellington, actually. So he didn’t tell you about his little arrangement...’ He resumed his pacing, looking slightly more relaxed, but Vanessa couldn’t allow her vigilance to relax correspondingly.

‘Arrangement?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ He glanced out of the French doors towards the back of the house and suddenly halted with a jerk. ‘What the—? Whose car is that in the garage?’

Desperate for a change of subject, Vanessa moved up beside him to look out at the gleaming white car tucked under the open arches of what had once been the coaching-house stables. ‘Oh, that! It—’

‘What an incredibly beautiful beast of a car!’ His envious drawl cut her off, startling her with its hint of boyish eagerness. Benedict Savage, the last word in sophistication—boyish? ‘Isn’t it a—?’ He leaned closer to the glass panes. ‘Yes, I think it is...a 1935 Duesenberg convertible coupé...just like the one Clark Gable had custom-made. Who on earth...?’ He straightened, suddenly letting loose a rare laugh that sounded half annoyed, half admiring. ‘My God, I bet she arrived in it! That would just be Dane’s style. So that must mean she’s still here somewhere—’

Vanessa stared at him, confused by this added complication. ‘But...I thought it was yours.’

His head snapped sideways. ‘Mine?’ His eyebrows rose in a haughty disclaimer. ‘What on earth gave you that idea? You know very well I have the BMW.’

Yes, a precision-engineered, elegantly low-key car that had seemed perfectly suited to his introverted personality. And yet here he was, practically drooling over a flashy, red-upholstered brute whose every gleaming inch was flauntingly extrovert.

‘Well...I...it was delivered yesterday in your name, so I naturally assumed... I thought perhaps you’d bought it as an investment...’ It was the only explanation that had fitted his coolly calculating image.

‘It was delivered? By whom?’ As usual he cut swiftly to the heart of the matter.

‘Two men. Yesterday afternoon. There was a letter—I assumed from the dealer. I put it there on your desk with the car keys.’

With one last, narrow-eyed glance at the car he picked up the flat envelope and slit the sealed edge with a neatly manicured thumbnail.

What he withdrew wasn’t a letter, but a large card of some kind. He stared at the weedy-looking, spectacle-wearing nerd that Vanessa, pretending not to look but unable to restrain her curiosity, could see gracing the front, before slowly opening it and reading the contents. As Vanessa watched, the flush that had lightly streaked his skin a few minutes earlier exploded into a full-blooded, Technicolor blush. He made a strange choking sound in his throat.

Vanessa was fascinated. She had never seen him look so flustered. ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ she murmured, her determined coolness rewarded by his dazed regard.

‘Dane’s given me a car...’

‘Given you a car?’ She now understood his helpless amazement. She had known that his friend was wealthy, as were most people professionally associated with her employer, but, even as ignorant about cars as Vanessa was, she realised that the gorgeous specimen in the garage was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Dane Judson had a quirky sense of humour and a liking for extravagant surprises, but his extravagances had never been reckless.

‘For my birthday.’ He scanned the card again and corrected himself. ‘No, not given, loaned—it’s being picked up again on Monday...’

That was more like it. Quirky but grounded in economic reality!

‘It’s your birthday?’ For some reason Vanessa had never thought of her employer having birthdays like ordinary people. He had always been so remote as to be ageless, above such frivolous goings-on as birthdays...

‘Today. I’m thirty-four,’ he revealed absently, staring down at the card, reading and re-reading the writing inside as if it were printed in a foreign language that he was having difficulty translating.

‘Many happy returns,’ Vanessa murmured weakly, wishing she had some recollection of the precise nature of the gift she had rendered on the eve of his birthday.

He didn’t respond, raking a hand over his head, spiking up more of the ruffled strands.

‘My God, last night on the phone...all that time Dane was talking about lending me a car, and I thought he was talking in clever metaphors...’

He groaned and closed his appalled eyes. ‘My God, if he ever finds out what I thought I’ll never hear the end of it!’ His hand covered his mouth as he groaned again, with heartfelt disgust, and his next mutter was almost smothered. ‘I must be mad! Ghosts? I could have sworn I hadn’t imagined any of it...’

‘Why, what did you think he was giving you?’ Vanessa asked, the extreme nature of his reaction spicing her curiosity.

His hand dropped away, and the eyes that had been blue with dismay chilled to the colour of pure steel, but his complexion was still betrayingly warm. ‘None of your damned business!’

She knew then exactly what ‘arrangement’ he thought that his sly-humoured friend had made.

She pokered up immediately, forcing down a rush of humiliated fury at the thought of being used as a sexual birthday favour. At least she had the excuse of being inebriated for whatever licentiousness she might have indulged in. He had no excuse whatsoever! And he hadn’t even bothered to look at her face! Her woman’s body had been all that had mattered. Her normally placid temper simmered dangerously.

‘No, sir.’

His eyes narrowed on her, as if he sensed the insolence she so badly wanted to display, but she remained stubbornly impassive and with a shrug he picked up the car keys, tossing and catching them in a gesture that was subtly defiant. ‘I think I’ll go and check out this magnanimous gift of Dane’s.’

‘I’ll tell Mrs Riley to hold your breakfast,’ said Vanessa smoothly as she watched him open the French doors and slip outside.

She knew what he was doing and a small smile of malicious satisfaction curved along her wide mouth.